Between History and Entertainment:
Historical Narratives of Different Means and Aims
I would like tobeginwith a quotation. Trite as it is, and repeated ad nauseam in introductions to Henry VI, PartI as an argument in dating the play, it does, nevertheless, open an interesting perspective. Itis a passage from Piers Pennilesse by Thomas Nashe:
How it would have joyed brave Talbot (the terror of the French) to thinke that after he had lyne two hundred yeares in his Tombe, hee should triumphe againe on the Stage, and have his bones new embalmed with the teares of ten thousand spectators at least (at severall times) who in the Tragedian that represents his person, imagine they behold him fresh bleeding. (Bullough 23)
This wonderful sentence lends itselfto analyses of several kinds. First, it relies on what, for want of better expression, I propose to call “historical truth”: Nashe takes for granted the historical existence ofTalbot - historical in the sense of belongingto thepast. Talbot hasbeen lying in his tomb for two
hundred years. Second, “the historical truth” is at the sametime
“moralised”:Talbotwasbrave, Talbottriumphed inthepast (he is now to triumph again).
Third, the return of Talbot is possible in the theatre: he triumphs in the tragedian’s representation, i.e., he is there and as the tragedian reenacts his “life and death”. Fourth, this the
atrical representation has its own dimension of “truth” which demonstrates itselfin the reaction of“ten thousand spectators” who imagine him bleeding, that is, they are conscious of repre
sentation, nevertheless, embalmhis bones withtears, that is, react emotionally in an empirically demonstrable way. This “truth”
ofthe theatre is the meeting point of imaginary representation and historical existence, of the historical fact and the present experience of the fact. In the quotation there is the additional ideological interpretationof bothhistory and theatre: Talbot was ahero, is represented asa hero and is accepted by the spectators as a hero ... on Nashe’s word.
I do not wish to go into the ideologicalperspective here, at least not for a while. I would like tolook a little more carefully at the understanding of history and theatre that stands behind Nashe’s words. Nashe goes directlyfor thehero, so history means great men. Such a reading of history is obvious in somebody educatedon Plutarch’s Lives and on themirrortradition.History has meaning as a treasury of important educational material, the value ofwhich relies on the example, exactly because the Aristotelian definition is acceptedwithout hesitation: history is how things were and their truth is the warrantof thevalidity of the lesson we areto be taught. In this light the representation of Talbot’s heroism is a representation oftruth;the tragedian offers truth,notfiction, and the aim ofsuch a representation isto educate the audience in patriotism. The second part ofthe Aristotelian
definition is entailed in the tragedian’s performance and in the reaction of theaudience - this is exactlywhat literary/dramatic representation does. It shows things “as they should be” and offers a sort of catharsis. glb| jag
But when we come to the problem of “how things should be” we touch the nerve. They should be according to whom?
The question takes us directly to ideology again, and again I wouldlike to postpone this discussion, because I think that first we should look into the palpable, the visible, the hearable actor who representsbothwhatwasand what should be. The catharsis depends on him,justasto a large extent he teachesthe lesson. His own representation depends, however, not only on the way the whole production works, but ultimately on the textof the play.
The text as theword andthe text as a potential dramatic structure into which the representation of say, Talbot, is inscribed. So ultimately we deal withthe representation through the word,and, aswe are now very much aware of, the word is the only access to thepast. Theplaywright responsible forhis “word” relies on the “word” of the historian. The truthis thematter of beliefand conviction, it is the perspective of the authorof the word which is giventheshape and the meaningwithin that perspective.
This ideological perspective, however, is neither simple, nor easy to define. It is enmeshed into a whole net of cultural conditions of various discourses. The discourse of drama, for example, at the end of the sixteenth century, is more than complicated. On the one hand, it is not yet “poesy”, and the challenge of Ben Jonson’s Works, 1616,is an excellent proofhere.
On the other hand, Sidney takes up tragedy and comedy in his Defence exactly because he believes them to be part of the high discourse ofart in distinction to the mongrel tragicomedy. Yet it was tragicomedy which defined to a large extent Elizabethan
and Jacobeandrama andtheatre. Sevenyears after Jonson’sown folio edition of Works, the FirstFolio of Shakespeare’splays was launched with the editors” conviction that theypresent the reader with works of art. And Jonson payed a distinctive tribute to the author ofmongrel tragicomedies, whichterm, however,was not connsidered by Hemminge and Condell as a suitable description ofanyof Shakespeare’s genres. Their divisionin partestrès keeps the time-honoured tragedy and comedy, addingto them histories.
But, as we know, the generic proposition of Hemminge and Condell, novel as it is, is also arbitrary and does not reflect contemporary thinking about dramatic genres. That thinking is much betterrepresented byPolonius when he recommends the actors in Act II,
The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral. {Ham. 2.2.415-8)
Historyloomslarge as a separate genre (put before the pas toral!), but also in the hybrid combinations which are funny, nevertheless, true asa description of thecontemporary dramatic practice. Genres were notfixed, but objects ofcontinuous nego tiations between modes of thinking and modes ofrepresentations on one hand, and the whole baggage of education andtradition on the other. That history as a genrewas not a widely accepted or understood fact is corroborated by the chaos ofquarto titles.
I wouldlike here onlyto remind you of two quarto titles. They are pertinent to my argument because they concern the early efforts ofShakespeareto deal with history as dramatic matterand the fact that they are titles ofreports rather than original work does notmatter here. They reflect contemporary thinking and/or understandingof what was being offered inthe theatre. The titles
run: TheFirst Part of the Contention of the famousHouses of Yorke and Lancaster (1594) and The true Tragedie of Richard Duke of Yorke (1595). The confusion whether we deal with a history or a tragedy reflects the confusion ofthe narratives. The title of The Contention suggeststhe emphasis on thetruth of history (as things were), while the title of The True Tragedy suggests the emphasis on theatricalrepresentation, on the mimesis of history in the tragic mode. Both, asweknowrefer toplays which were a conscious, professional, though not yet masterly, reworking of the historicalnarratives of various historians into dramatic narra
tives which were shaped according to theexigencies of the public theatre, withfull knowledgeof the expectations of the audiences of a spectacle, made attractive by its pageant qualities, poetic moments, heroic speeches and emotional tensions. In short, it was a spectacle which allowed the audiences to indulge in the pleasures of “washing with their own tears” the wounds and corpses strewn across the stage, or to let themselves be swayed by the emotions. Again the text ofHamlet, this superb treatise on theatre, comes handy:
. . . this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion Could force his soul, so to his own conceit That from her working all his visage wann’d, Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect, A broken voice, and his whole function suiting With forms to his conceit. . .
. . . He would drown the stage with tears And cleave the general ear with horrid speech, Make mad the guilty, and apall the free, Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculty of eyes and ears. {Ham. 2.2.578-92)
The title The true Tragedy promises thatmuch, and keeps the promise inmorethan one way, to remind one here of the Molehill scene(1.4)or Margaret’s formidable speech atTewkesbury (5.4).
Butforacloser analysis of the dramatic versus historical nararative I wouldlike to go backto 1 Henry VI. My choice is dictated by two considerations. First, 1 Henry VI is now accepted as the first attempt to create a historical play, so it is a natural object of investigations such as mine; second, the scope of this paper demands materialwhich can be suitably concentrated. I have, therefore, concentrated on Talbot.
Accepting the fact that the business of a historian and the business of a playwright differ because they work within separate discourses; we have to admit, nevertheless, that the momentthe playwright takes historical matter as his material, he creates a common groundon which the two discourses arebound to meet.
Yet, such modelling cannot obtain whenwe rememberHayden White’s proposition to see historiography as narrative. In fact, White’s theory opens thecommonground for thetwo discourses in a waywhich allows them to differ only bywhat traditionally was consideredasgeneric differences within the art ofliterature, namely, bythe shaping of the narrative in an epic or inadramatic form. Takingin handHall’s Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Families ofLancastreand Yorke (1548) and Shakespeare’s 1Henry
VI we deal with two differentwaysof representing the past, with
outbeingcommittedtotruth judgements in respect of history. In quite anunexpected way Nashe’s text quoted at the very begin
ning of the present paperlegitimizes our postmodern position.
Shakespeare’s Talbot becomes historical Talbot exactly because the text and theperformance create him persuasivelyenough.
I do not propose hereto repeatthe well known and thoroughly worked out ways1 in which Shakespeare adapted Hall’s, Holin-
shed’s,or any other historian’s materials. My aim is tolookat the two texts as representations ofthe same historicalfigure in order to arguethat the processof negotiations betweenhistory and theatre which tookplace at the end of the sixteenthcentury and which yielded a new dramaticgenre to which I proposeto givethe hybrid name of “tragicall history”, took place in factbetweentwo literary representationsrather than between two differentdomains.
The Patay incident inwhich Talbot gets imprisoned by the Frencharmy is describedbyHall in the following way:
The Englishmen commyng forwarde, perceived the horsemen, and imaginyng, to deceive their enemies, commanded the fotemen to environe and enclose themselfes about with their stakes, but the French horsemen came on so fiersly, that the archers had no leyser, to set themselfes in a raie. There was no remedy but to fight at adventure. This battaile continued by the space of three houres.
And although thenglishmen wer overpressed with the nombre of their adversaries, yet thei never fledde back one foote, till their captain the lord Talbot, was sore wounded at the backe, and so taken. Then their hartes began to faint Sc thei fled, in which flight, there were slain above. Xij.C. and taken xl. (Bullough 59)
The narrativemakes militarysense, itis consise, constructed on the consecutive developments of events and bound by the cause-and-effect logic: The Englishmen are surprised by the enemy, they tryto react,but it istoolate and they cannot organize their defence. They fight under the circumstances dictated by the enemy who, havingadditional advantage ofnumbers, defeat the Englishmen after a three-hour fight. Such a reading of the narrative showsthe featuresof ahistorian’s or chronicler’s account
*Cf. Andrew Cairncross’s excellent Introductions in the Arden editions to the three parts of Henry VI.
aiming atanaccurate report. This accuracy, however, is controlled by the rhetoric of persuasion as well as thenarrator’s perspective.
The enemy camesofiersly that theygavetheEnglish nochance to prepare their defences, the English archers hadno leisure (time) to set themselves in array and so the English couldnot help but they had to engage in an unequal fightingatclose quarters. Thus the narrative’s logic gets a persuasive colouring of an apology, which is thenimmediately strengthened bytheemphasis on the courage and determination of the ill-fatedarmy ofTalbot: they were overpressedwiththenumber oftheir adversary, yet they never fled back onefoot. Thenarrator introduces here a perfect rhetorical figure to constructhis “historical report” at theright angle: the (hi)story is about theundaunted English. Historyenters perhaps only as a reference to a fact: the defeat. The story gets off the ground the moment the narrator infuses his narrative with the intentional meaning, the illocutionary force directed at shaping the reader’s response:the circumstancesinwhich the Englishare undaunted to the extent that they never move back, not even a foot, until Talbot iswounded. The evaluation and exaggeration hasnothing to do with history, but everythingwithrepresentation of ideas about theEnglish soldiers and their commander. It is a perfect incident of a heroic narrative.
Now the relevant passage in 1 Henry VI shows that the playwrightfound the story toldwell enough to be incorporated into theexposition ofthe play. The third messengerbrings news of Talbot’s defeat in 1.1. The way Shakespeare picks his way throughHall’s detailschanging theminto his own is instructive:
Having scarce full six thousand in his troop, By three and twenty thousand of the French Was round encompassed and set upon.
No leisure had he to enshrank his men;
He wanted pikes to set before his archers;
Instead whereof sharp stakes pluck’d out of hedges They pitched in ground confusedly
To keep the horsemen off from breaking in.
More than three hours the fight continued;
Where valiant Talbot, above human thought, Enacted wonders with his sword and lance:
Hundreds he sent to hell, and none durst stand him;
Here, there and everywhere, enrag’d he flew:
The French exclaimed the devil was in arms;
All the whole army stood agaz’d on him.
His soldiers, spying his undaunted spirit,
“A Talbot! a Talbot!” cried out amain, And rush’d into the bowels of the battle.
A base Walloon, to win the Dauphin’s grace,
Thrust Talbot with a spear into the back. (1H6 1.1.112-38)
Shakespeare’s heroic narrative relates tothesame incident and to the same facts: the unexpected encounter with the enemyfar outnumbering the English force putthe latter at adisadvantage, which ends withwounding and capturing of Talbot. To facts, if you like, we mayadd“thespaceof three hours”, the measurement as precise as unreliable, but fact-generating.
Shakespeare does notmerelyrepeat, though. He usesrhetor
ical suggestions of unquestioned heroism to build on them, to enlarge the figure of Talbot into a towering hero at the expense of his men. If Hall offers to us a team of heroes who never gave up a foot, here they only start fighting when Talbot “en actedwonders with hissword”. Thenarrativeconstructsa scene of the battle where the hero is in the limelight, and the two armies become the backdrop to hisprowess. To give the narra
tive a direction more tragic than the one in Hall, Shakespeare makes Falstaff desert Talbot before not after the defeat. This alteration is a good illustration of the negotiation between the two representations: what is at stake is a tragic-heroic dimen
sion ofthe play: Talbot must grow into a giant heroic figure before the action begins. Another aspect ofthe alteration is the functioningof the speech: it isto makea suitable impacton the audiences, it has to be eminentlyactable, it hasto have rhythm creating tension, it has to operate in a mode of a good story dramatically coming to life. Thus in the narrative scenery we are shown the French “sent to hell” rather than “xij.C. slain”
on the English side, because the action is Talbot’s, not theen
emy’s. The energy is given to the hero, even though he is to be struck in the back by a base Waloon whose intentions are far from chivalrous. Where is history? In one way it is beyond the reach ofeither text. In another, it is the essenceof both,though the essence is put to different uses. To stress the point of the use, I would like to bring in here the Captain’s description of the exploits of Macbeth.Afterfifteen years of dramatic practice Shakespeare builds with a firm hand a tragedy of a hero lifted from a historical account but rendered in the dramatic mode.
Yet the ingredients of the later tragedy - like the expository description of the hero in action - were put to theatrical test much earlier in that unsure hybrid of a tragicall history play whichoscilatesbetweenaheroic narrative of thepast and a tragic narrative of the dramatic now.
Wegetmoreof the dramatic hero of Talbot in his brave end.
Halltellsthe story ina vividway, quotingat lengtha dialogue with his equally heroicson just beforethelast battle. Quoting? Aproper term, inaccord with the rhetoricaltraditon,would beinventing.
Inventionwas an honouredway of good writing, accounting for
its attractiveness and persuasiveness. So, like a good author, Hall invents, firstin theindirect way,andthen in the direct speech:
[The Earl of Shrewsbury] perceivynge the imminent jeopardy and subtile labirynth in the which he and hys people were enclosed and illaqueate, despicynge his own safeguarde, and desirynge the life of his entierly and well beloved sonne the Lord Lisle, willed, advertised and counsailled hym to depart out of the felde, and to save hym selfe. But when the sonne had aunswered that it was neither honest nor natural for hym to leve his father in the extreme jeopardye of his life, and that he would taste of that draught, which his father and Parent should essay and begin: The noble earl 8c comfortable captayn sayd to him: Oh, sonne sonne, I thy father, which onely hath bene the terror and the scourge of the French people so many yeres, which hath subverted so many townes, and profligate and discomfited so many of them in open battayle, and marcial conflict, neither can here dye, for the honor of my countrye, without great laud and perpetuall fame, nor flye or departe without perpetuall shame and continualle infamy. But because this is thy first journey and enterprise, neither thy flyeng shall redounde to thy shame, nor thy death to thy glory: for as hardy a man flieth as a temerarious person folishly abideth, therefore the fleyng of me shall be the dishonor, not only of me 8c my progenie, but also a discomfiture of all my companie: thy departure shall save thy life and make the able another tyme, if I be slayne to revenge my death and to do honour to thy Prince and profit to his Realme. But nature so wrought in the sonne, that neither desire of lyfe, nor thought of security, could withdraw or pluck him from his natural father: Who consideryng the constancy of his chyld, and the great daunger that they stode in, comforted his souldiers, cheered his Captayns, and valeauntly set on his enemies, and slew of them more in number than he had in his company. But his enemies havyng a greater company of men, 8c more aboundance of ordinaunce . . . fyrst shot hym through the thyghe with a handgonne, and slew his horse, 8c cowardly killed him, lyenge on the ground, whome they never durst
loke in the face, whyle he stode on hys fete, and with him there dyed manfully hys sonne . . . (Bullough 73)
The art oflanguage, as we can see, is not unknown to the historian. It is worth ofLyly. His invention offers us an insight into a heroic dialogue where the speakers make ample use of rhetorical figures in order to be more persuasive. Hence the son’s metaphor of drinking of the samedraught, or the father’s formidableantitheticalsequences.But the mainpersuasiveactis directedat thereader;the historianinvents thedialogue in order to make the reader understand the right values, to get the lesson in heroism, patriotism, loyalty, etc., from history. Facts are left for a while to make roomfor a story inorderto make the reader
“correctly” understand history. Hall’s ideological manouvers are superbly literary.
What happens in 1 Henry VT? Shakespeare negotiates with Hall’s heroic narrative muchmore freely than inthe case of the expository description because he decides to represent Talbot’s deathasaction. The battleof Bordeaux takes thebest part of Act IV, it is prepared in scene ii, discussed and sentenced to a defeat by the English nobles in scenesiiiand iv, to finally take shape on the stagein scenesv,vi, and vii. Scene v is Shakespeare’sversion of the dialoguebetween father andson, scene viis Shakespeare’s invention, amplifying the story: Talbot saves hissonfrom death on the battlefield, which isanoccasion for more heroic exchanges between the two; scene vii brings Talbot’slamentand death over his son’s body. Such structure ofthe action brings as a result much more stressonthefather-sonrelationship,but also extends the persuasive rhetoric of heroism. What Hall’s story sketches in ashort passage, inthe play is made intolong-winded, much more bombast exchange ofspeeches. Dramatically, it is not an
interesting solution, but sits well in the poetics ofrepresenting history, moralising its lesson. Dramatically significant istheevent invented byShakespeare: the savingoftheson, the firststage of thebattle, where the hero is again ableto “do wonders withhis sword”. ThistimeTalbot himself tells us of his exploits,
When from the Dauphin’s crest thy sword struck fire, It warm’d thy father’s heart with proud desire Of bold-fac’d victory. Then leaden age,
Quicken’d with youthful spleen and warlike rage Beat down Alencon, Orleans, Burgundy,
And from the pride of Galia rescu’d thee. (1H6 4.6.10-5)
Apart from confirming the heroic prowess of Talbot, the incident is an opportunity to create emotional links between father and son. They are not only absolute in their chivalric virtues, but they are also loving human beings:
. . . Speak, thy father’s care,
Art thou not weary, John? How dost thou fare?
Wilt thou yet leave the battle, boy, and fly,
Now thou art seal’d the son of chivalry? (1H6 4.4.26-9)
Similarly, earlier, in scenev, Shakespearemakes Talbotspeak lovingly to his son. The formsof address, - son, dear boy, boy, John - offerthe tragedian an opportunity to act theprivate, more intimate hero, to create an emotional representation,whichwill be fullyexploitedinthe orchestration of thehero’s death in scene vii.
Shakespeare does not follow Hall’s instruction here, but invents an entirely differentscenario:the Talbotwho enters scene viiisan old, broken man, a drastic change fromthe enthusiastic, though doomed fighter of the end of scene vi.Thatsuchatransformation is part of the dramaticnarrativeismade clear by the original stage
direction. In the Folio there isno scene division, butbetweenthe heroic Talbot’s exit and thebrokenTalbot’s entrancethe SD reads:
Alarum: excursions. EnteroldTalbot led. Thus a period ofdumb fighting issignalled to represent the battle, the time necessary for things tohappen, yet no other spoken actionis introduced; such solution puts the emphasis on Talbot’s metamorphosis giving it aclearemotional aura,and itis emotion which is fully exploited by what follows.Talbot is given alengthyspeech, the rhetoric of which minglesthe ubi sunt lamentwith an elegy on the deathof a hero, but finishing on the personal note:
Where is my other life? Mine own is gone.
O, where’s young Talbot? Where is valiant John?
And in that sea of blood my boy did drench His over-mounting spirit; and there died
My Icarus, my blossom, in his pride. (1H6 4.7.1-15)
At this point the body of the boy is carried in, and the father makes another-his last - speech, an invocation to death.The end is significantin terms of the dramatic narrative:
Poor boy! He smiles, methinks, as who should say, Had Death been French, then Death had died today.
Come, come, and lay him in his father’s arms:
My spirit can no longer bear these harms.
Soldiers, adieu! I have what I would have, Now my old arms are young Talbot’s grave. Dies.
(1H6 4.7.27-32)
What has Shakespeare done? I believe he has constructed his narrative insuch a way as tooffer a truly tragic representation of Talbot’s fate. The tragic qualityof Shakespeare’s narrative consists partly inmaking use of the historical factsin his own,ahistorical
way, butpartly, inoffering emotionally high moments. It is such moments which allow the audiences to embalm the bones of Talbot with their tears. They imagine him bleeding because the tragedian who represents him is given stuff which lendsitselfto emotional, highly strung performance This is where tragedy as adramatic genre manifestly shapes the representationofhistory, justifyingthe description “tragicall history”. The hybridterm, in myopinion, does more justice tosuch plays as the threepartsof Henry VI, Richard III, or RichardII. After all, the scene ofthe death of Talbotis in its dramatic shape not different from the scene of the death of King Lear.
The epic narrativeofHall gives history theshape of a heroic tale, makes it into a moralised story to be read and pondered about. The dramatic narrative of Shakespeare gives history a shape of consecutiveacts, also highly moralisedby monologues and dialogues. Butthe consecutive acts are given the structureof a plot,although episodic, yetdefinitely bound.Partof that binding iseffected by thetoolsof the tragedian’s kit.The persuasive effect of such representation of history relies less on the rhetorical shape of the argument (although itlooms large in the plays), and more on the emotional momentwhichhas to be created every time the actor plays. That Shakespeare was successful with his actors is madeclear by Nashe: “tenthousand spectators(at severalltimes)”
were moved by the preformance.
To finish this discussion on the negotiationbetween history and entertainment we have to ponder at lasttheissue ofideological persuasions. History is politics and politics works on ideologies.
Any representation of history, then, cannot be free from some form of ideology. The problem is howto define theideologyof a text. We all know how often the same text may be read in different directions. More, how often a thorough study ofthe
historical contextwould not yieldanunambiguous answer. In the widestsense ideology is about human ideasbased on knowledge or lack of it, on beliefs, convictions, attitudes, and prejudice.I do not think that there exists a definition which ensures necessary objectivisation ofthe term, and therefore any ideological agenda is ultimatelysubject to deconstruction which invites another, and the processnever ends. Whatwe can claimfor the Renaissance representations of history within the framework of the present paper is a modest but obvious proposal: since we deal with texts employing the arts of persausion of two literary genres, namely, heroic narrative and dramatic narrative, we can argue aboutideology with anyamount ofconfidence only from theuse of languageinthe textswhich differ by their openlyavowed aim:
Hallwould probably vow to have assertedtruth; Shakespeare, I believe, would repeat after Sidney that poesydoes notlie because it asserts nothing, while the truth inthe theatre depends on the actors. But in the final readingHall’s truth is not asserted, itis created as muchas that ofany poet.Thus the heroismofTalbot cannot really be questioned, because it exists only to the extent to which words make it exist.
There is no doubt that Renaissance historiograhy was a serious business of long tradition in Britain whose culture had been centred on the idea of history as a reliable political and moral script, to remind you here onlyof the Venerable Bede,the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, or Geoffrey of Monmouth. The texts ofthe English Renaissance historians as well as ofthe Roman historians, in Latin or in translations, were staple food ofthe educated. They wereread on the firm assumption that history is truth. But theywere alsoread as textswhich were well written;
theartoflanguagewere there for everywriter tomake use ofand everyreader to enjoy. Thus, the tragicall history, a new offer for
the stage, is not really asurprise. It is yet another wayin which history and arts of languagecombine to offer both a lesson ofthe past and a pleasure ofdealingwith an inventive representation.
The entertainmentI mentioninthe tide of thispapertakesplace in the case of tragicall history more fully when the tragedian on thestagemanages the impossible and transforms the past intothe present fortenthousand spectators on several occasions.
WORKS CITED
Bullough, Goeffrey. Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare's Plays. 8 vols. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957-1975.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. The Complete Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare. Ed. W.A. Neilson and C.J. Hill. Cambridge, Massachussets: Riverside, 1942.
White, Hayden. The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation. Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 1987.
Shakespeare, William. Henry VI, Part I. Ed. Andrew Cairncross. Lon
don: Roudedge, 1992.
